hi guys
just wondering if any body can shed some light or history on these ,i hav some equipment that was used during WW2 and it has US 7 stamped on it near the modle tags
i presume this relates to the US 7 fleet was this connected to the seebees ?
is there any way of tracing where these machines originated from <fort or camp> and was the US7 numbers stamped into other makers equipment <LT ALLIS GM >
regards chris

Chris - The last post in the following thread will help you out somewhat ..

acmocbb.org/ACMOC_BB/showthread.php?t=2401&page=3

There's no way of tracing the origin of individual items of military equipment .. all paperwork relating to a particular item of equipment is destroyed by the military upon the sale or write-off of that item.

Yes, the US7 stamp was placed on the ID tag of all items of equipment that were part of the US Seventh Fleet. It would not have been placed on individual engines, unless the engine was part of a larger unit, such as a genset, dozer, trencher, crusher, paver, etc, etc ..

I have yet to find out if the US7 stamp was applied to Lend-Lease equipment, and Australian-owned equipment in the 7th Fleet .. or if it was just applied to U.S.-military-owned equipment.
I suspect the tag was placed on all Lend-Lease equipment, as well as purely U.S.-military-owned items, as the Lend-Lease items that were issued to the Australian military, remained the property of the U.S. Govt at all times, until the U.S. Govt either sold, or wrote off the items.

The idea originally behind Lend-Lease was for all L-L items to be returned to the U.S. at the end of WW2 .. however, powerful manufacturing industry leaders were alarmed at America being flooded with returning military equipment that would ruin their sales for years to come, so they engineered for nearly all of it to be destroyed in some manner.
A huge shortage of shipping at the end of WW2 didn't help, as all ships were being used to return troops to their homes. In some cases, it took several months to arrange the troops return.

Jeeps and trucks were driven into the interior of Australia and had their oils drained and left running with a brick on the accelerator .. planes, dozers, cranes, trucks, trailers were either driven or flown into the sea off islands in the Pacific .. or taken out to sea in ships and pushed over the side. The few US7 survivors are items that were salvaged after the Americans left .. and it's possible, a small number were sold at military surplus auctions/tenders in the late 1940's.

None of these records of equipment/auctions/sales/tenders remain .. they were all destroyed as they were regarded as being of no value. It's only in recent years that archives have been established that keep everyday files for future records.
Digital, on-line storage has assisted that angle greatly, as the original paperwork for all this equipment would have taken up warehouses, and no-one was prepared to finance that kind of "useless storage".
The only records that remain, in a general form, are some ads for military surplus sales, that you can find on eBay occasionally.

The other day in the local paper here the town of Berwick Pa. is looking for one of the army tanks that was made there in the old AC&F plant during the 2nd world war.They showed an engine from one and I,m pretty sure they were an airplane engine that was used in them and looked like one.They employed lots of people from all over the area back then and I lived at that time about 30 or 35 miles away and a bus came around and picked up workers for down there and lots of car pooling went on too.There were other defense work going on down there in the area besides the tanks.Now down near Berwick there is a nuke power plant in operation and has been there for several years now and lots of labor jobs were available in it,s building but was all big union jobs so the average Joe couldn,t just go and get a job.It was not believeable the money that was wasted in it,s building. Things were built and then torn down and something different put in it,s place so it went on and on and on.A friend of mine drove dump truck on the job and he got stuck one day so called for a tractor to pull him out so a D9 came down and my friend got out to hook the cable on the hook on the front of the truck and the dozer operator said get back in the truck and wait as a laborer will come to hook it on. Well he said they waited for an hour or more and finally a laborer came and all he did was drop the tow cable on the hook and the dozer pulled him out. This is just a drop in the bucket that went on down they. The Cat dealer I worked for we weren,t even allowed to go on the job because of the big union to work on equipment if it broke down.

SJ, that's what used to go on a lot, and is mighty discouraging. The modern sequel to your story is that in some industries, organized labor has (unfortunately) priced themselves out of the market. The autoworkers come to mind. (Yes, management has also been incompetent.) The new Congress and President will strengthen the hand of organized labor. Seems they are having a more difficult time winning representation elections. I wonder why. GWH